


Quantum Entanglement

by LittleObsessions



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Episode AU: s07e25 Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager), F/M, Introspection, Romance, Temporal Prime Directive (Star Trek), inner-narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24612100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleObsessions/pseuds/LittleObsessions
Summary: "You have come to realise over the years that there was nothing you could have done, could do, to drive him away."
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	Quantum Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [“…sometimes I breathe them, and sometimes they choke me.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10195862) by [LittleObsessions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleObsessions/pseuds/LittleObsessions). 



> Thank you to MiaCooper for Beta-ing this and fixing my maths for me. Numbers have never been my strong point.
> 
> I set out to write the Admiral, and tasteful smut. 
> 
> I got this instead. Even I surprise myself some times.
> 
> It's linked to my story “…sometimes I breathe them, and sometimes they choke me.” But reading that isn't necessary.

* * *

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”

Khalil Gibran

* * *

Would you have come back here, you ask yourself, if you had known what it would really feel like to have wounds that had finally closed – or at least you were brazen enough to believe they had - neatly torn open?

Yes, you tell yourself, of course you would have.

For eternity.

You would have always come back to this point, because even though you never stopped living, you died here too.

And that is the truth of it, unimpeded by logic, or by every other thing you have packed these last twenty-five years with to fill the void.

You died here.

Once, and many more times for good measure.

You were not scared of returning. If anything, it felt like a relief to cease pretending that you were honourable, or at peace.

Or happy.

As soon as you stepped foot on her – felt the thrum of her, quiet and powerful beneath your boots – it felt so indescribably right. The stars aligned, and you knew yourself to be on the path you had veered so wildly off.

For a moment you questioned it, but only for a lightning-quick fraction of a second, before a younger version of you – less bitter, far less furious – stepped in front of you.

Only days before, you had told Mark your plans. Even now, you can’t understand why you felt like you had to confess them to him, but he listened, patient, and then when you were finished, he took your hands in his own. You looked down at them, intertwined; older, wizened and spotted and lived-in, and you knew these were hands you should never had held in the first place.

“You have been so painfully alone,” he had said, giving a voice to all the torture you’ve had to bury.

You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t agree.

“I will miss you,” he had said, softly.

You look, now, at your younger self as she stands over the helm, her hand on Paris’ shoulder. And you want to weep (you have wept so many times) for all of her mistakes, and what is ahead of her if you don’t intervene.

If you ever considered this selfish, it was only selfish for you – this conception of you, and of what you’ve become.

What you are about to do, for her, is a mercy. It is an act of sacrifice in the hope that she won’t emerge from this as broken as you are.

“Admiral.”

This, you thought, you had prepared for.

But it occurs to you in this moment – like a revelation you were slow-witted for not having realised beforehand – that there was nothing that could have prepared you for this.

The sound of his voice; a voice which slips into your dreams, which calls out your crimes in the depth of your most painful moments, jolts through you, settling in your very core.

“Chakotay.”

You still have to look up to him, and it doesn’t feel fair.

A pulse between you; maybe longing, maybe hatred, maybe something so beyond all of those things that you can’t possibly comprehend it.

It’s as if he has used all of his energy just in acknowledging you.

_So we’re on similar playing fields_ , you think.

“Excuse me,” you say, turning to go.

Because if you are to break at any moment, it will be in this one. This is your shortcoming.

And you’ve spent a good portion of your energy preparing yourself to look upon him, and not be broken.

If he wants something from you, whatever it happens to be, you won’t be able to give him it.

As you walk away, the feeling of his eyes on you as you do, you are not sure that your determination was successful.

And when the tears start to come your suspicions are confirmed.

Later that night, as if drawn like the tide, you find yourself at his door, pressing the chime.

You slide on and off of your tiptoes, you bite your lip. You are a grown woman – old now – and yet nerves course through you like you were a cadet.

You used to do this, you remember soberly, and shame washes over you and you turn just as the doors open.

“Kathryn.”

Bold.

But you’re relieved.

You turn back to him and he beckons you in to his dark, familiar quarters. You have missed this. You have missed the smell.

You used to do this, once, a long time ago. With another Chakotay, in another lifetime.

And once that man was married to Seven, he used to show up to your quarters in the dead of night and take you in his arms and say things he should never have said and do things he should never have done.

You hate yourself for that. You hated him for it too.

And yet you love – loved – him, more than you are able to acknowledge, even to yourself.

If you were selfish for doing this, then you remind yourself that you’re saving him from the guilt that will eventually eat into his very bones and drive him to a premature death.

And key in all of this: you are saving Seven from a humiliation she doesn’t deserve and will silently endure. A humiliation at the hands of people who loved her but who care about nothing but the relentless pull towards each other, in the end.

“I-“ you falter as you look at him, and he holds a whiskey out to you.

“I can’t get my head around it,” he says, as if you missed half of this conversation and came to it in the middle. “That you are here.”

“Can you imagine how strange it is for me?”

He looks at you as if you’re deluded, and you understand that. You know the end of this story, you know how they grew, how they died, how each and every moment became a gruelling ordeal, but they don’t.

So of course, your being here is strange to him.

“If I don’t do this…” your words trail away.

“You don’t need my permission,” he says gruffly, turning away from you to sit on the couch. “You are well beyond that in the now, so I doub-“

He catches himself, tries to claw back his betrayal after he’s thrown it into the dense silence of his quarters. But it is so bitter, you can taste it.

“We will do terrible things if I don’t,” you say, and the edge of your voice is both pleading and angry.

It is testament to what remains – remained between you – that he considers your words, weighing them up before he speaks.

“It can’t be so bad for you,” he finally says, though there is trepidation when he does.

“Trust me?”

There is silence then, and though you don’t dress it as a question, it comes out at one. The longing in your own voice surprises you. 

He shakes his head.

“I didn’t realise it was so bad, so early on,” you admit, not necessarily to him. “You already hate me.”

“I could never hate you.”

He says it as he looks you in the eye, straight-shooter.

You know it to be the truth that it is, the joy and the sorrow that it is.

He could never hate you and that was partly the problem. My god, how you tried, in so many ways. But it always backfired, either because your efforts were half-hearted or because he was limitless. You have come to realise over the years that there was nothing you could have done, could do, to drive him away.

And so finally, in his last months, you gave in. A consolation prize, and the guilt was always eating away at you both so that you could not really allow yourselves to just be.

His wife, your Seven, was always on the fringes of the moments you shared together. Even in death.

Sometimes the infinite breadth of his commitment leaves you reeling, even now, ten years after he took his last breath as you wept silently at his side.

And you can see it in him now, even when you are a stranger to him.

You reach out your hand, grasping, longing, and he sees it for what it is.

He stands and comes towards you, and he reaches out his hand and cups your cheek. It is the first time, for him, that he has ever touched you like this.

For you it is like there is finally oxygen in your lungs.

You let your eyes flutter closed, and the feel of his skin against your own is a bliss you have never forgotten, and one you have longed for.

He moves to kiss you and you hesitate, turning your face away.

“I’m so old.”

Your age has never bothered you, and in truth you are hiding behind it. Your age doesn’t matter, but your brokenness does. You don’t want him to see that.

But then it occurs to you he already has.

“I don’t care,” he says, and you do not imagine the desperation in his voice.

You tilt your face up, and let him cover your lips with your own. It steals your breath and you sink into his arms as he pulls you towards him, and when his fingers wander into your hair the tingling sensation of familiarity moves you to sigh.

You move to the couch, and when his fingers begin stripping you of your uniform it doesn’t even occur to you to be self-conscious, because the relief you feel is so whole that anything of recrimination takes a backseat.

“Kathryn,” he gasps, as your fingers delve below his waistband.

It is devious because you have known his body, and you haven’t forgotten, and your glee at having this advantage shouldn’t bring the joy it does and yet you smile against his mouth.

He pulls away and stands and offers his trembling hand.

“Bedroom?”

You hesitate for a moment. But then you realise that, even in this life, this might be your grace for having suffered for so long.

You put your hand in his.

Tomorrow you will die, so for one last time you will live.


End file.
